This volume explores the relationship of citizenship and gender across a range of regions, nations and historical time periods. This collection of essays acknowledges the accomplishments of feminist scholarship in explicating the gendered exclusions that were inherent in notions of citizenship and civil society at their inception. In eight case studies the authors seek to render citizenship a useful category of feminist analysis by embracing the dualities, contingencies and contradictions contained in the concept of citizenship. The notion of citizenship as subjectivity acknowledges the importance of the legal prescriptions of citizenship rights and duties, but probes more centrally how those historical actors who lacked formal citizenship rights (women, minorities) assigned meanings to the prescriptions and delineations of citizenship laws, rhetorics, and practices. At the heart of each case study is an exploration of how gender shaped claims-making activity in the name of citizenship and how women, often aligned with immigrants and minorities, took a leading role in articulating these claims.